7 Things You Might Not Know About the Game Simon

Introduced in 1978, Simon represented an evolution in tabletop gaming. Not exactly a board game but not quite a video game, it straddled the line between the past and future of recreational diversions. To play the game, users must memorize a series of tones and lights on the four-button surface, then repeat them in order. As the patterns grow more complex, the game becomes more challenging. (Or frustrating, depending on one’s perspective.) Simon was a hit upon release and has remained a pop culture fixture for over 40 years. For more on the game’s history, keep reading.

1. Simon was invented by Ralph Baer, the “Father of Video Games.”

In the 1960s, German refugee and former World War II Army intelligence officer Ralph Baer was a military engineering contractor who decided to moonlight as a video games pioneer. Baer visualized a system that could be connected to a television to play games on the screen. In 1971, Baer and his employer, Sanders Associates, filed for and later received the first-ever video game patent. The system would become the Magnavox Odyssey, which went on sale in 1972.

Years later, Baer would have another idea. Working as an independent consultant for the toy firm Marvin Glass and Associates, Baer was drawn to an Atari arcade game called Touch Me. He and Marvin Glass employee Howard Morrison had seen it at a trade show in 1976. While they liked the premise—players had to repeat a musical sequence—they felt the execution was lacking and the sounds were unpleasant. Using Touch Me as a jumping-off point, they decided to try and craft a better version. (It was only fitting, as Atari had taken a cue from the Magnavox Odyssey to create their arcade hit Pong.) Along with programmer Lenny Cope, Baer and Morrison worked for nearly two years on a handheld version originally titled Follow Me that had four buttons. Crucially, the four tones they selected were much more pleasant to the ear. Baer selected the four notes played by a bugle. Milton Bradley licensed the idea, and Simon (named after the children’s game Simon Says) was released in 1978.

2. Simon was the hottest toy of the 1978 holiday season.

Making a splashy debut at the trendy Studio 54 nightclub in New York on May 15, 1978, Simon quickly made an impression with adults and found itself hastily added to many holiday wish lists. That winter, several stores reported a Simon shortage and long lines of people hoping to get a crack at a new shipment. One store sold through 1000 of them in just five days. Milton Bradley ultimately put Simon on allocation, meaning that stores received only a portion of their orders until they could ramp up production to meet demand.

3. Simon was very expensive for its time.

Simon originally had a retail price of $25, which amounts to about $92 in today’s dollars. Unlike video game systems, Simon could only do one thing. But people were enamored with computer-based diversions, with many pointing to the novelty of the microprocessor chip as a key reason the game was so popular. (Just a few years prior, the chips had mainly been used for handheld calculators.) The original Simon was also big, taking up considerable space on a tabletop and devouring multiple D batteries.

4. Simon got a sales boost from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The year before Simon went on sale, director Steven Spielberg released Close Encounters of the Third Kind, starring Richard Dreyfuss as a man who establishes a relationship with extraterrestrial life. During the finale, the aliens communicate using musical notes and lights on their spaceship. Though there was no connection between the movie and the game, the popularity of Close Encountershelped raise awareness for Simon, which exhibited a similar pattern. More than 10 million copies were sold by the end of 1982.

5. Simon led to a lot of knock-offs.

Milton Bradley found that there was no shortage of devices looking to capitalize on the Simon phenomenon. A device called Einstein was rectangular instead of circular but had a similar layout. Atari, which produced the Touch Me arcade game Baer and Morrison used as inspiration, released that same game in a handheld version. Among the knock-offs, only Tiger Electronics had a subtle sense of humor about taking obvious inspiration from Simon. They titled their octagon-shaped device Copycat. According to Baer, none of them took off because their noises lacked the charm of the four-note bugle.

6. Simon inspired a Queen album cover.

The musical toy had fans in Queen, the rock band led by Freddie Mercury. For their 1982 album, Hot Space, the band seemed to take inspiration from the design of Simon for the cover, which features the four bandmates in a four-colored grid.

7. There’s a touch-free Simon.

Since its inception, Simon has seen a variety of spin-offs hit the market. In 1979, Milton Bradley releasedSuper Simon, with four buttons on each side of a rectangular device that pitted players against one another in a timed contest. Simon Stix with drumsticks followed; Simon Swipeoffered touch-based interaction. The most intriguing might be Simon Air, a vertical Simon iteration released by Hasbro—which bought Milton Bradley—that allows players to wave over the colored sections with their hands. Another version, Simon Optix, uses a headset to flash colors before the user's eyes. Players can then use their hands to replicate the pattern.

9 Myths About Theodore Roosevelt

Our 26th president was a man larger than life—and is forever much larger than life, thanks to the fact that he's on the side of a mountain. But as with any such figure, myths and legends arise. So we’re here to explain the truth behind some popular stories about Theodore Roosevelt.

There has long been disagreement about how to pronounce "Roosevelt." A 1902 New York Times article listed 14 different possibilities, from “ROSA-FELT” to “ROOZE-VELT,” “RUZY-VELL” to “RUZA-FELT.” The next year, Richard Mayne of the Department on Reading and Speech Culture, New York State Teachers’ Association, wrote to the Sun that the name was subject to 200 different pronunciations, but that most people pronounced the first syllable like "room." And legend has it that the two Roosevelt presidents pronounced their names differently. According to a 1984 article in the Washington Post, “Theodore Roosevelt's name rhymed with ‘goose.’ It was, to switch spellings a bit, ‘Ruse-a-velt.’ Franklin Roosevelt, a distant cousin, pronounced his name to rhyme with ‘rose’—‘Rose-a-velt.’ Since FDR served later and longer, his version has been generally adopted.”

Not so fast: We know that's not true, from TR's own pen. “As for my name, it is pronounced as if it was spelled ‘Rosavelt.’ That is in three syllables. The first syllable as if it was ‘Rose,’” he wrote in 1898. (He was used to the confusion, though; he wrote to his parents during his freshman year at Harvard that one of his teachers called him Rusee-felt, and that "hardly any one can get my name correctly, except as Rosy.") Later, FDR would confirm the same: In 1932, the Chicago Tribune verified with FDR's office—he was governor of New York at the time—that it was pronounced “Rose-a-velt.”

They weren't the only Roosevelts to weigh in: When Mayne wrote that most people pronounced the first syllable like "room," Theodore's uncle, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, submitted a rebuttal. “It is rather a dangerous proceeding to assume that a man does not know how to pronounce his own name,” he wrote to the Sun, explaining that the family pronounced it “Rose-(uh)-velt.”

The two presidents may have agreed on the first part of their name, but maybe not the -velt part. Traditionally, Roosevelt is pronounced -velt, but in recordings of his manyinaugurations, FDR pronounces his last name more like "rose-a-vult." So if a pronunciation difference does exist, it might be nearer the end of the name.

Myth: Theodore Roosevelt rode a moose.

It’s a dramatic picture to be sure—Theodore Roosevelt riding a moose through a lake. It’s so ridiculously manly that it’s sometimes featured on lists of photographs you won’t believe aren’t photoshopped. But while this image wasn’t created using the popular image editing software, it’s still just as fake. It was part of a collage created for the 1912 presidential election, featuring Taft riding an elephant, Roosevelt riding a moose, and Wilson riding a donkey. In 2013, Houghton Library published a blog post detailing the story, with author Heather Cole explaining that it appears to have been an image of Roosevelt riding a horse where Roosevelt was cut out and pasted onto a separate picture of a moose. This also explains why focus, shadows, and most other features don’t match up between man and steed.

Myth: Theodore Roosevelt created the modern image of piranhas.

It’s a story that has featured in countless adventure novels—a member of an expedition goes to the shore of the Amazon with just his mule. The mule returns to camp alone, causing a frantic search for the missing person. They come to the water’s edge and see a devoured skeleton. The culprit? Piranhas. Except that’s not from any dime novel, it’s a story related to Roosevelt by his companions that appears in Through the Brazilian Wilderness, published in 1914 and written by Roosevelt, which details his adventures in South America.

The book features several stories about piranhas: that they’ll “snap a finger off a hand incautiously trailed in the water” and can devour a cow alive. "The head with its short muzzle, staring malignant eyes, and gaping, cruelly armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ferocity," he wrote.

Roosevelt's book is also commonly cited as being the origin of the reputation of piranhas as ferocious carnivores. But he wasn't the first to make that claim.

In 1880, Scientific American declared, “They make nothing of biting an ounce or so of flesh from a man’s leg. People are sometimes killed by them. Hence Brazilians are shy of going into these lakes and streams if they suspect the presence of these fish. The fishermen claim that piranhas will gather in schools against the larger fish and attack them.” And an account from around 30 years before Roosevelt was born notes that “The horses and cattle sip only from the [water’s] surface, and hardly dip their nose below it; notwithstanding which it is often bitten off. Even the cayman flies before this fierce enemy, and turns its belly, which is not provided with scales, to the surface of the water: only the otter, whose thick fur resists the effect of the bite, is secure against its attacks.”

But even if Roosevelt wasn't the origin of the myth, he likely did much to cement the idea in the minds of the public that piranhas are blood-thirsty creatures. In reality, the fish are typically pretty relaxed ... until they're spooked. And they more typically scavenge for their dinner. Some species are even vegetarians.

Myth: Theodore Roosevelt cured his asthma with exercise.

In 2015, two researchers examined Theodore Roosevelt’s asthma, including the story that he cured it through exercise when he was around 12 years old. They found multiple references to asthma attacks when Roosevelt was an adult, such as after his first wife died and during a pillow fight with his children in the White House. Once, when his second wife was in labor, he took a train to get there, and his daughter remarked, “Both the engine and my father arrived in Oyster Bay wheezing.”

The researchers ultimately concluded that “in hindsight, it seems more likely that the improvement was coincident with the quiescence of asthma often seen in adolescence,” so Roosevelt himself may not have been completely responsible for his improved condition.

As for how the myth was perpetuated? Well, Roosevelt biographer Kathleen Dalton has an answer for that. "He ... encouraged his friends and authorized biographers to tell an upbeat, socially acceptable, stiff-upper-lipped version of his life," she writes. "He began, and they perpetuated, the myth that by force of will he cured himself of asthma." As his sister Corinne would write to a biographer, "he never did recover in a definite way—and indeed suffered from it all his life, though in later years only separated at long intervals."

Myth: Theodore Roosevelt was inspired to be a conservationist thanks to a camping trip with John Muir.

In 1903, Roosevelt and John Muir—co-founder of the Sierra Club, and also its first president—went on a three-night camping trip that has been described as “the most significant camping trip in conservation history.” In the years that followed, Roosevelt would become known as an ardent conservationist—which is often implied as the legacy of this trip.

The only problem with that story is that, by 1903, Roosevelt had been fighting for conservation for years.

In the late 1880s, alongside George Bird Grinnell (editor-in-chief of Forest and Stream) and a few other sportsmen, Roosevelt co-founded and was the first president of the Boone and Crockett Club. According to historian John F. Reiger, “it, and not the Sierra Club, was the first private organization to deal effectively with conservation issues of national scope.”

As Roosevelt himself explained in March 1893, the club was a group of men “interested in big-game hunting, in big-game and forestry preservation, and generally in manly out-door sports, and in travel and exploration in little known regions.” One clause of its constitution was “To work for the preservation of the large game of this country, and, so far as possible, to further legislation for that purpose, and to assist in enforcing the existing laws.”

As president of the Boone and Crockett Club (a position he’d hold until 1894), Roosevelt worked to pass the Forest Reserve Act, which as President of the United States he’d use to preserve millions of acres of land. Historian Edmund Morris writes, “Thanks to the [Boone and Crockett Club’s] determined lobbying on Capitol Hill, in concert with other environmental groups, the Forest Reserve Act became law in March 1891 ... One wonders if [Roosevelt] ever paused, while signing millions of green acres into perpetuity, to acknowledge his debt to the youthful president of the Boone and Crockett Club.” The Boone and Crockett Club would also be instrumental in the protection of Yellowstone in 1894.

Then where does the story that the “the conservation president” began thanks to a hiking trip with Muir come from? Something definitely happened. In 1902, there were 26 establishments or modifications of national forest boundaries, according to the USDA [PDF]. In 1903, it was 17 (though this was still more than previous presidents—in 1900, there were three modifications). In 1905, it was 60.

Historian Anthony Godfrey has a theory—that it was because of Roosevelt’s role as an “accidental president” filling out McKinley’s term. Over his partial first term, he attracted to the Republican Party like-minded progressives, so, when he won in his own right in 1904, Roosevelt was in a position to change the nation’s forestry policy. No matter what the reason for the change in conservation tactics, though, Roosevelt had been drawn to the cause for years before the camping trip with Muir.

Myth: Theodore Roosevelt invented the term Lunatic Fringe.

Roosevelt may lay claim to beginning its modern meaning—he wrote in 1913, “we have to face the fact that there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement”—but he was seemingly adapting an existing phrase: a literal lunatic fringe, which an 1875 newspaper described as “the fashion which our girls have got up of cropping the hair and letting the ends hang over the forehead. They used to call it ‘banging,’ but ‘lunatic fringe’ is the most appropriate.”

Indeed, Roosevelt's 1913 quote itself isn’t from a great political treatise; it’s in an article entitled “A Layman’s Views of an Art Exhibition.” In the same article he also said, “In this recent art exhibition the lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and the Futurists.” (He went on, “There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another.”)

Roosevelt would eventually use the phrase more explicitly in a political context—after receiving a painting of one of his heroes, he proclaimed in a letter to a friend that “I am always having to fight the silly reactionaries and the inert, fatuous creatures who will not think seriously; and on the other hand to try to exercise some control over the lunatic fringe among the reformers.” But according to Safire’s Political Dictionary, the term was revived and given new life by FDR in the 1940s, who used it explicitly to refer to the “fear propaganda” that has “been used before in this country and others on the lunatic fringe.”

Myth: Theodore Roosevelt was the first president not sworn in on a Bible.

The world of Bible usage during presidential inaugurations is a dicey one, as often (especially for early presidents) the evidence is inconclusive [PDF]. John Quincy Adams wrote, “I pronounced from a volume of the laws held up to me by John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, the oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States,” and LBJ used a Catholic missal after Kennedy was assassinated. Others are more obscure. For instance, Calvin Coolidge is often listed as being sworn in on the family Bible after Harding’s death, but in his autobiography, Coolidge explicitly noted that “The Bible which had belonged to my mother lay on the table at my hand. It was not officially used, as it is not the practice in Vermont or Massachusetts to use a Bible in connection with the administration of an oath.”

The assertion that Roosevelt didn’t use a Bible when he was inaugurated in 1901 after McKinley's assassination comes from Ansley Wilcox, the Buffalo resident who owned the home in which Roosevelt took the presidential oath. According to 1905’s Historic Bibles in America, Wilcox recalled, “no Bible was used, but President Roosevelt was sworn in with uplifted hand. As I recollect it, there was design in this. There were Bibles, and some quite interesting ones, in the room and readily accessible, but no one had thought of it in advance, there being little opportunity to prepare for this ceremony, and when Judge Hazel advanced to administer the oath to the new President he simply asked him to hold up his right hand, as is customary in this State. We seldom use Bibles in this State in administering oaths except in court rooms, and they are not required even in court rooms.”

Myth: Theodore Roosevelt was the presidential savior of football.

In 1905, college football was becoming increasingly controversial due to multiple deaths and injuries, so Roosevelt summoned representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to “clean up” the sport. A committee met and drew up new rules (a more thorough discussion can be found here), and then Roosevelt largely stepped away from football reform.

Just a few years later, in 1909, Harper’s Weeklyasked “Dr. Hadley, Dr. Lowell, Dr. Wilson”—a reference to the presidents of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, respectively—“don’t you think football, as it was played this year, is a little rough? There had been twenty-seven deaths up to November 21st ... You could stop this kind of football if you chose, you three men. The mothers can’t, poor souls.” Wilson responded by writing Lowell and Hadley to have “an informal conference ... to save a very noble game.” The three schools met, and by May 1910 came up with a suite of new rules. According to a 1988 article by John S. Watterson, the rules that emerged were “seven men on the line of scrimmage, no pushing or pulling, no interlocking interference (arms linked or hands on belts and uniforms), and four fifteen-minute quarters,” as well as readopting the forward pass in a limited role.

Soon after the rules were widely adopted, Watterson explained that “In the years that followed the reforms on the gridiron, football evolved rapidly into the ‘attractive’ game that Wilson had advocated and a far less brutal game than the unruly spectacle that Roosevelt had tried to control.”

Myth: The 1912 election was Theodore Roosevelt’s last attempt at the Presidency.

After Roosevelt lost the 1912 election, it might seem that the Progressive Party faded into nothingness—but that’s not quite true. Roosevelt’s running mate in 1912 was governor of California Hiram Johnson, who ran for reelection as governor in 1914 as a Progressive and got more votes than the Democratic and Republican candidates combined. In April 1916, John Parker ran as a Progressive candidate for governor of Louisiana, which was, according to a contemporary article in the Shreveport Times, a bid to boost Roosevelt’s power for the Republican convention coming up. Parker failed, but still got 37 percent of the vote (in 1912, the Republican gubernatorial candidate only got 8.78 percent). Such was his success that at the 1916 Progressive Convention, Parker was a natural pick for Vice Presidential candidate.

But what to do for president?

A mile away, at the same time the Progressives were having their convention, the Republicans were also having their convention—and the tone couldn’t have been more different. According to a contemporary account, the Progressive convention and Republican convention were “as different ... as champagne from ditch water boiled and sparkled and effervesced,” because the Republicans were torn between Charles Hughes, who “they would give their eye teeth not to take” and Roosevelt, who “they would not have.” The Progressives, however, were firm in a desire for Roosevelt.

To avoid a repeat of 1912, the Republicans and Progressives held a series of meetings to try and come up with a compromise candidate. According to historian Edmund Morris the Progressives were willing to give away virtually their entire plank in exchange for Roosevelt’s nomination, while the Republicans made it clear Roosevelt was not an option. At the end of the first ballot, Hughes was far ahead of Roosevelt but without a majority. Quickly Roosevelt realized he wouldn’t win, so suggested Henry Cabot Lodge as a compromise candidate. It came to naught and the Republicans chose Hughes. At almost the exact same time the Progressives chose Roosevelt to run for president again.

The only problem was that Roosevelt didn’t seem to want the nomination. “I am very grateful to the honor you confer upon me by nominating me as president," he wrote to the Progressive convention. "I cannot accept it at this time. I do not know the attitude of the candidate of the Republican party toward the vital questions of the day.” Roosevelt did suggest an out, that the Progressive National Committee could wait to see where the Republican candidate stood on the issues and if they were satisfied with what they heard they could accept Roosevelt’s refusal. If they weren’t satisfied, they could talk it over with Roosevelt and decide the next step.

A little over two weeks later, the Progressive National Committee in a vote of 32-6, with nine declining to vote, endorsed the Republican candidate. The New York Timesdeclared, “The Progressive Party as a separate political organization died tonight.”

Except not really. There was still the issue of VP candidate John Parker. And Parker did campaign—largely against Hughes, and by inference for Wilson, although he explained that he’d “speak against Mr. Hughes’ candidacy. Of course, that would be in favor of Mr. Wilson, but I will speak as a Progressive and not as an affirmative supporter of the Democratic nominee.”

Come the election, the Progressive Party received 33,399 votes, down over 4 million from 1912.

In the days before the election, when it became clear Wilson was going to win, one of Roosevelt’s friends commented, “We can ... look forward to 1920. There will be nothing to it then but Roosevelt. No one can stop it.” To which Roosevelt replied “You are wrong there ... This was my year—1916 was my high twelve. In four years I will be out of it.”

Roosevelt died suddenly in 1919, but the Roosevelts weren’t out of the game yet. In 1920, Republican Warren G. Harding crushed James M. Cox as well as his vice-presidential nominee—Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

11 Scrumdiddlyumptious Roald Dahl Facts

A world without Roald Dahl would be a world without Oompa Loompas, Snozzcumbers, or Muggle-Wumps. And who would ever want to live in a world like that? Celebrate the author with these gloriumptious facts about the master of edgy kids' books.

1. Writing was never Roald Dahl's best subject.

Dahl held onto a school report he had written as a kid, on which his teacher noted: “I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended.”

2. Making up nonsensical words was part of what Roald Dahl did best.

When writing 1982’s The BFG, Dahl created 238 new words for the book’s protagonist, which he dubbed Gobblefunk.

3. Roald Dahl's first profession was as a pilot.

And not just any pilot: Dahl was a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force during World War II. And it was a plane crash near Alexandria, Egypt that actually inspired him to begin writing.

4. Roald Dahl got into some 007 kind of stuff, too.

Alongside fellow officers Ian Fleming and David Ogilvy, Dahl supplied intelligence to an MI6 organization known as the British Security Coordination.

5. Roald Dahl's first published piece was accidental.

Upon recovering from that plane crash, Dahl was reassigned to Washington, D.C., where he worked as an assistant air attaché. He was approached by author C.S. Forester, who was writing a piece for The Saturday Evening Post and looking to interview someone who had been on the frontlines of the war. Dahl offered to write some notes on his experiences, but when Forester received them he didn’t want to change a word. He submitted Dahl’s notes—originally titled “A Piece of Cake”—to his editor and on August 1, 1942, Roald Dahl officially became a published author. He was paid $1000 for the story, which had been retitled “Shot Down Over Libya” for dramatic effect.

6. Roald Dahl's first children's book was inspired by the Royal Air Force.

Published in 1942, The Gremlins was about a group of mischievous creatures who tinkered with the RAF’s planes. Though the movie rights were purchased by Walt Disney, a film version never materialized. Dahl would go on to become one of the world’s bestselling fiction authors, with more than 100 million copies of his books published in nearly 50 languages.

7. Roald Dahl read Playboy for the articles.

Or at least his own articles. While he’s best known as a children’s author, Dahl was just as prolific in the adult short story sphere. His stories were published in a range of outlets, including Collier’s, Ladies Home Journal, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and Playboy, where his topics of choice included wife-swapping, promiscuity, suicide, and adultery. Several of these stories were published as part of Dahl’s Switch Bitch anthology.

8. Quentin Tarantino adapted a Roald Dahl short story for the big screen.

One of Dahl’s best-known adult short stories, “Man from the South” (a.k.a. “The Smoker”), was adapted to celluloid three times, twice as part of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (once in 1960 with Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre, and again in 1985) and a third time as the final segment in 1995’s film anthology Four Rooms, which Quentin Tarantino directed.

9. Roald Dahl's own attempts at screenwriting were not as successful.

One would think that, with his intriguing background and talent for words, Dahl’s transition from novelist to screenwriter would be an easy one ... but you would be wrong. Dahl was hired to adapt two of Ian Fleming’s novels, the James Bond novel You Only Live Once and the kid-friendly Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; both scripts were completely rewritten. Dahl was also hired to adapt Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the big screen, but was replaced by David Seltzer when he couldn’t make his deadlines. Dahl was not shy about his criticisms of the finished product, noting his “disappointment” that the film (and its changed title) shifted the story’s emphasis from Charlie to Willy Wonka.

10. Roald Dahl made an important contribution to the field of neurosurgery.

In 1960, Dahl’s four-month-old son Theo’s carriage was struck by a cab driver in New York City, leaving the child suffering from hydrocephalus, a condition that increases fluid in the brain. Dahl became very actively involved in his son’s recovery, and contacted toymaker Stanley Wade for help. Together with Theo’s neurosurgeon, Kenneth Till, the trio developed a shunt that helped to alleviate the condition. It became known as the Wade-Dahl-Till valve.

11. Even in death, Roald Dahl's sense of humor was evident.

Roald Dahl passed away from a blood disease on November 23, 1990 at the age of 74. Per his request, he was buried with all of his favorite things: snooker cues, a bottle of Burgundy, chocolate, HB pencils, and a power saw.